Was Stalingrad the Turning Point of WWII?

"Modern war is a war of motors. The war will be won by the side that has an overwhelming superiority in the output of motors"

 - Joseph Stalin, November 1941.

Here we will explore the common assertion that Stalingrad was the turning point during WWII.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to the Harvest the Mars podcast. I'm your host Joe Campo, a professor of history whose parking spot is now somehow further away than when I was a student. For this episode, we will explore a simple question. Was Stalingrad the turning point of World War II? No. The idea that there is a particular moment in war, almost always a battle, when the fortunes of victory swing like a pendulum from one side to the other makes for good theater and dramatic storytelling. It gives meaning to participants. It provides clarity for those seeking to understand history. But wars are incredibly complex. Weapons have to be made. Raw materials must be extracted. Food and supplies need to be delivered. Transportation networks have to be efficiently managed. Innovations must be researched. Soldiers need to be trained. Populations need to be convinced to sacrifice. The list of tasks that all need to be done to even get an army into the field and ready to fight goes on and on. The outcome of World War II did not suddenly transform because the Germans lost a battle in the autumn of 1942. The Battle of Stalingrad is said to have begun on well, we're not quite clear about that. The fact that we can't pin down an exact date for when the tide supposedly began to turn should tell us something. Soviet historiography preferred the date July 17, 1942. That was when its forces contested the German advance at the approaches to the city on the Don River. Other interpretations favor August 23rd, when German forces first entered Stalingrad proper. For argument's sake, we'll go with the Soviet interpretation because that date more accurately reflects that Stalingrad was more of a protracted campaign with multiple phases than a singular battle. If the tides supposedly turned to Stalingrad, then that would mean the Axis forces were winning on July 16th. That's a hard no. The Japanese lost their carrier striking power six weeks earlier at Midway, and the Americans were already planning their Guadacanal offensive. Erwin Rommel's Africa Corps had overextended itself and was stalemated at El Alamine by British forces. Six months earlier, the Red Army had already decisively stopped the vaunted Wehrmacht in its invasion of the Soviet Union. This is just from a military perspective. The Axis situation gets a lot bleaker when we look at things like logistics, production, manpower, and access to raw materials. Japan was an industrial pygmy compared to the nation it bombed at Pearl Harbor and found itself fighting a two-front war when it had difficulty sustaining just one. During the war, Japan managed to only build four fleet carriers. Only one of those, Taiho, operated with the fleet. By way of comparison, the United States commissioned 17 Essex class carriers, with seven more nearing completion at the time of the Japanese surrender. Germany's main European ally, Italy, was not a great power, and its small industrial base was incapable of delivering the weapons it needed to fight a total war. A single American corporation, Ford, produced more weapons than the entire country did. Italy and Japan were woefully lacking iron and oil needed to fuel a wartime economy. The reason Japan and Italy were aggressive powers in the first place was that they aspired to be what Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union already were. Self-sufficient empires with enormous industrial capacity. On paper, Germany had the potential to be a great power and industrial giant. But it was disarmed after World War I and lacked the abundance of raw materials that its enemies possessed. No rubber, shortages of crucial minerals such as nickel, tungsten, chromium, and above all, oil meant constant bottlenecks for its industrial plant and military forces. For all its vaunted reputation of blitzkrieg, the reality was that over 80% of German soldiers walked, and much of its logistics were of the 19th century, carted by horses. For reasons historians still debate, Germany's wartime production never came close to its potential. It should have outproduced the Soviet Union in everything. Germany had a more skilled workforce, produced more steel, and had access to plunder from wartime conquests. This included forty percent of the Soviet population and agricultural base. Germany also did not have to relocate its industries thousands of miles to Siberia. Despite all these advantages, Germany's production of weapons was pathetic by comparison. In 1942, the year of Stalingrad, about 5,000 tanks rolled off Germany's factory lines. The Soviets produced nearly 25,000. That's 5,000 to 25,000. A Soviet five to one superiority in the key weapon system of land warfare. The Soviets also dwarfed Germany in artillery sixty nine thousand to twenty nine thousand. Small arms five million to two point three million aircraft twenty five thousand to sixteen thousand. This is just the Soviet Union we're talking about here. Germany was also at war with Great Britain, which during 1942 also built more tanks and aircraft than Germany. And we didn't even get to the United States, which by the end of the war would produce more war material than the rest of the world combined. Let's stop here and emphasize that Germany, which had long surpassed Britain industrialization by 1900, was outproduced by the British and tanks and aircraft in 1942. We're just talking Britain here. Now we are expecting the Wehrmacht to advance 1300 kilometers against a different enemy that built five times as many tanks? And doing this while sustaining their overstrained lines of communication with a logistics system that relied on horses? This is crazy. How exactly is that a winning situation for Germany that required a battle to turn the tide? The answer is simple. Germany was already losing the war. The tide had already turned. When did the tide turn? The Second World War was won because of the enormous advantages in productive capacity, resources, and manpower possessed by the Allied side. That should be the focus when looking for a turning point, not a battle won or lost. On june twenty first, nineteen forty one, only the British Commonwealth was at war with Germany. In the eighteen months before that, the Germans had conquered Poland, Scandinavia, France, the Low Countries, and Greece. There was zero prospect of a British army landing anywhere in Europe and defeating the Wehrmacht. With the Soviet Union as Germany's partner in conquest and as a supplier of raw materials, Germany's strategic position was enviable. Six months later, on December 11, 1941, the situation had dramatically transformed. Germany was at war with Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Its armies were in retreat from the frozen depths of the Soviet Union and the hot sands of the western desert. Berlin did not even gain a proper ally from the Japanese attacks on American and British forces. Toky strictly observed its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and allowed US Len lease to unload at Vladivostok right under the noses. The industries in Detroit, Birmingham, and Urals that would bury Germany and Japan were beyond the reach of any Axis forces. As Churchill would correctly write, all that remained was the proper application of overwhelming force. What this amounts to is that by mid-December 1941, Germany was losing a war. The Japanese position was even bleaker. At least the Germans could convince themselves that their excellent army might actually reach the Soviet heartland in some decisive campaign and knock the Soviets out of the war. The Japanese Navy could never reach the continental United States. Japan's strategy in the Pacific was defensive. It could never impose its will on the American enemy. Only hope Washington would seek a compromise peace after heavy losses. Japan was too weak and the Americans were too outraged by Pearl Harbor for it ever to be a realistic possibility. It is precisely because of weakness and the poor strategic position the Axis powers faced after December 1941 that prompted both Germany and Japan to embark on desperate offensives in the summer of 1942. The Japanese would commit almost their entire Pacific Fleet to Midway in order to destroy the U.S. carriers that were already engaged in an offensive posture, raiding their perimeter and even bombing the home islands. The Germans would send much of their striking power and overextend themselves in a risky attempt to capture the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus. Both Tokyo and Berlin recognized they needed a dramatic decisive victory to change the fortunes of war that had not unfolded favorably. So the tide turned at some point between June 22nd, 1941 and December 11, 1941. People familiar with the timeline of the Second World War will recognize this was the period of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. On June 22nd, German armies crossed the border in a devastating surprise attack. The German Blitzkrieg was at its peak during the summer 1941, constantly encircling and destroying Red Army units in battle and capturing millions of prisoners. But then things started to go wrong. Soviet society did not collapse, German logistics broke down, the Red Army recovered, weakened German forces pressed on, spreading themselves dangerously too thin. By December 4th, the Germans had reached within ten miles of Moscow. The next day, Soviet forces launched a massive counterattack, ending Barbarossa in failure. Two days later, on the 7th, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Four days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11th, Germany declares war on the United States. In just one week, we went from two separate wars on Asia and Europe turning into a single global conflict that we now know as World War II. That single week in December 1941, from the 5th to the 11th, appears to mark the most dramatic turn of events in a war. Before, the German Wehrmacht seemed poised to capture Moscow and perhaps knock the Soviet Union out of the war. One week later, those very same forces were in retreat, and the full weight of America's arsenal democracy was officially at war with both Japan and Germany. If we're talking turning points, a lot more turned in that week in December than at Stalingrad. So did the tide turn in December 1941? Not quite. If our criteria for a turning point gives us this sequence of events, Germany is winning, insert turning point, Germany is losing, then December 1941 only gets half of that right. In January 1942, the Axis powers were definitely in a losing strategic situation. In 1942, the Allies are going to build 10 times as many tanks. The Germans already have a shortfall of 50,000 barrels of oil per day, and 2.7 million tons of U.S. Len lease unloads at Vladivostok. So we can put a fork in Germany. But I think its position was almost as desperate in November 1941. The Germans never got to Moscow because they overextended themselves and outran their logistics. Their troops were fatigued, their supply vehicles had broken down, and about half of their vaunted panzers were not operational. It's a self-serving myth that the Germans were beaten by snow and mud rather than their own hubris, poor strategy, and inadequate strength. Offensives succeed only if the logistics are there that can supply armies with enough ammunition, food, reinforcements, fuel, spare parts, tools, proper kit, communication equipment, and other basic needs. The German war machine was short of all of this when they launched their attack on Moscow on October 1st. They had no chance of making good on these shortages because of its small production totals and 19th century logistics strain. The Soviets, fighting in their heartland, could much more easily and rapidly reinforce, replenish, and rebuild their forces. In a prolonged nutritional campaign lasting months, the Germans would eventually be exhausted and weakened, making them vulnerable to counterattack. That is precisely what happened in December at Moscow. German weakness in autumn 1941 is a fact. We know this because of evidence from Germany's own sources. Historian David Stahel's series of books in Operation Barbarossa shows their own diaries, army records, and internal discussions proves the Germans themselves were pessimistic about their position as early as August 1941. They knew their supply system had broken down, and the Red Army's constant counterattacks were sapping the Wehrmacht's operational strength. All of this was predicted by Germany's Quartermaster General before Barbarossa even began. Upon seeing the plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union, Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner drew a line 500 kilometers from Germany and told Hitler that after crossing this threshold at the end of July, the Wehrmacht would run out of fuel, spare parts, and ammunition. Those facts were not disputed. Rather, Hitler did not consider them relevant. If the Red Army was destroyed and the Soviet system collapsed beforehand, then it wouldn't be necessary to resupply the German armies. Events proved Wagner exactly correct. The Soviet Union did not collapse. Once the German panzers reached Smolensk in late July, they had outran their logistics and were forced to assume a defensive posture against determined Soviet counterattacks. Already, by August 1941, the Germans were short on vehicles, their troops were exhausted, and many commanders were expressing pessimism. Was Barbarossa doomed from the start? That is currently a popular interpretation among historians. Many now believe Nazi Germany was incapable of defeating the Soviet Union's vast geography and resources, that Hitler committed a major blunder for even trying. This interpretation wasn't always popular. For about two generations after the war, Western historiography of the Eastern Front was pretty limited. The older view held that the Germans could have and perhaps should have won. But Hitler's flawed strategy snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. From this older perspective, Stalingrad was seen as the point of no return, a culmination of Hitler's blunders that turned a potential German victory into a certain German defeat. Even though the Stalingrad turning point thesis is tied to an outdated view of World War II, you still hear it all the time. It's in survey textbooks. Wikipedia claims it. Google's AI overview still says that Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. It's been repeated for so long and for so many times that it has become something taken at face value. It's really bizarre to hear that Stalingrad was this great turning point while also hearing Hitler's blunder invading the Soviet Union lost in the war. Well, which is it? Was it the invasion or was it the battle? It's not both. While I do think the invasion of the Soviet Union is a better candidate for a turning point than Stalingrad, it relies on the concept of inevitability, which is bad and lazy history. Nothing in history is inevitable. Certainly not in war. Chance and war have always been historically linked because contingency and unpredictability are inherent features of human conflict. If the Vietnamese or Afghans looked only at the paper statistics of the great powers they were fighting, they would have objectively concluded that fighting was pointless, put down their arms, and given up. Russia's geography, size, and population did not prevent it from losing to Germany any central powers in World War I. War is a struggle of wills between societies, and it is foolish to assume there is an automatic willingness to die, kill, and suffer to make good on paper statistics. The Soviet system and the Stalinist regime in particular needed to prove they were capable of taking a punch in the mouth and convincing their citizens to fight back against a devastating military. Just because something happened in history does not mean it had to happen. The Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany because it lost 27 million people and it remained in a very unusual partnership with allies who literally fought against that same Soviet system just 20 years earlier. There was nothing inevitable about that at all. When did the tide turn then? By August 1941, most of the factors that brought about the defeat of Nazi Germany were in place. Stalin's regime remained firmly in control. Soviet citizens willingly were going to the recruiting centers, including many women who do not have to. Soviet industries were relocating. The Red Army was becoming increasingly professional and was already counterattacking. Great Britain had formally signed an agreement with the Soviet Union in which both pledged not to make a separate peace. The initial German blitzkrieg had largely shot its bolt and was in need of refit and replenishment. The Germans themselves recognized the situation had dramatically changed from just a few weeks earlier. This is what Franz Holder, the chief of staff of the German Army High Command, wrote in his diary on July 3rd, when the panzer armies were at full strength and tearing out the Through the Red Army. And I'll quote him directly. It's really not saying too much if I claim that the campaign against Russia has been won in 14 days. Five weeks later, his outlook had changed completely. This is what he wrote in his diary on August 11th. The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus. At the outset of war, we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. If we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen. This pessimistic assessment reflected the anxiety felt throughout the German military leadership. These men were highly professional and aware that Germany did not have the resources or the capability to win what they called materials, a war of attrition. They knew the only way to defeat the Soviet Union was in a decisive campaign that forced the collapse of the Russian system. Precisely what happened to Russia during the First World War and in the 1940 blitzkrieg against France. They saw their logistics breaking down. This is why they were so desperate to convince Hitler to drive directly on Moscow. They knew their strength was too weak to fight indefinitely. They hoped the fall of the Soviet capital would trigger the collapse of the enemy, they grossly underestimated. If the Germans themselves sensed the strategic situation had changed, so should we. Could the Germans have captured Moscow if Hitler had listened to his generals? Most likely. In August 1941, the Germans were faced with two large Red Army concentrations. One to the south in Kiev, the other to the east by Moscow. The problem that Hitler and his generals faced was that they were too weak to take both. So they argued where to devote their limited strength. That's their problem, inadequate strength. Not that Hitler disagreed with his generals. Historically, Hitler decided to take out Kiev. The Germans won the greatest encirclement victory to date in the history of war, capturing over half a million Red Army troops. But the Soviets kept fighting. The exhausted and overstressed Germans did not have the strength to reach Moscow and were defeated in the December counterattack. This is where the older literature blames Hitler for losing the war. The contention was that if Hitler had instead attacked Moscow, he would have taken it. Yeah, I will grant that. What there is zero evidence for is the assumption that real war follows the model set up in computer war games, whereby the mere act of taking the enemy's capital instantly removes every enemy army and declares you the winner. The Soviets had already evacuated their government to Khoibushev. Industries were already relocated to the Urals. If we follow the general's advice, then we are taking away Germany's great victory at Kiev. That means we are keeping an entire frontage of Soviet armies in its order of battle, which could still counterattack the overextended Germans in Moscow on their southern flank. It is almost as if this literature forgets what happened to Napoleon's Grand Armee after it took Moscow. Even if we grant this fantasy that the Soviet Union just would have collapsed if the Germans attacked Moscow, that still means the tide of war turned in August 1941, when Hitler directed his armies away from Moscow, not the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of 1942. The key point here is not which strategy the Germans did or did not adopt in August 1941. Instead, it was that they were in a dilemma born of weakness, prompting the argument between Hitler and his generals. The Soviet Union, although battered, bruised, and bloodied, had absorbed Germany's best punch and were better adapting to the reality that the Eastern Front was now a war of attrition. What the Germans needed to do was avoid the situation they found themselves in by August 1941. Weakened forces, running out of fuel, not enough replacements to spread out in the depths of the Russian space. The Japan factor. In the two months between June and August 1941, we are talking poor German military strategy, self-defeating mass murder, and the perseverance of the Soviet system. Most of the factors that led to defeat of the Axis powers were already in place. Except one. The Elephant in the Room. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II was so complicated that it's really hard to pin down a neat date for a history textbook to say the war turned in favor of the Allies. There were no Axis powers before Pearl Harbor. Japan was fighting its own separate war against China, and there was nothing inevitable about an American entry into World War II. People who say the U.S. would have entered anyway don't have any evidence for this and ignore the very strong indications that the United States would have continued its policy neutrality. According to a Gallup poll released on July 20th, 1941, 79% of Americans said they would vote to stay out of a war with Germany. That is an overwhelming percentage, and the date is highly significant. The Soviets certainly seemed to be losing. Gallup later asked on September 10, 1941, who Americans thought would win the war. Only 6% responded with Germany. 25% predicted a stalemate, and nearly 70% thought England would. Those polls tell us even in the darkest days of the Allied cause, when Hitler's panzers were blitzkrieging toward Moscow, Americans did not want to enter the war and thought Germany was going to lose. Why would they change their mind after the Germans lost the Battle of Moscow and were in full retreat? The answer is simple. They wouldn't, because there is no reason why they should. If we are even going to have the Axis powers, the United States in the war, and for the Asian theater to end with the destruction of Japan's empire, then Tokyo must go to war with the United States. That too was not inevitable. Even the Japanese themselves knew war with the United States was a highly risky and dangerous gamble. Their decision to go to war was heavily influenced by events in Europe. Germany's defeat of France in June 1940 presented Japanese strategists what they felt was a quote golden opportunity to strike at the resource-rich European colonies in Southeast Asia. Still, the Japanese were not sure which of its numerous options were best. Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 forced Tokyo to choose between striking north into Siberia or south against the weakly defended European colonies. By the end of July, Japan took a crucial step in the southern strategy by occupying French Indochina. This is what triggered the U.S. embargo on oil, putting Tokyo at a crossroads. Do they abandon China? Do they attack only the British and the Dutch? Or do they strike at the United States? Over the next few months, momentum would build towards the Pearl Harbor option until November 26, 1941. On that date, the Ki de Bhutai, Japan's carrier strike force, departed from the Carol Islands and steamed toward their date with destiny on December 7th. Japan chose the worst path to take. Sneak attacking the neutral United States as a means to get their oil and rubber from the European colonies. They did this while allowing the Soviet Union to receive a massive amount of aid from the very same United States that it attacked. From the Asian perspective, the events shortly after the Barbarossa invasion also set in motion the crucial week in December 1941 when the Second World War actually became a world war with the formation of the Grand Alliance between Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Conclusion There is no disagreement why the Allies won the war. The overwhelming advantage in population, industry, and access to raw materials gave the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain a preponderance of military power that Germany and Japan could not hope but match. Geography also favored the Allies. The English Channel, the Pacific Ocean, and the vast distances of the Soviet Union meant the Axis forces, however skillfully commanded, would struggle to reach the strategic heartland of their enemies. None of this is disputed, none of it is controversial. Why so much attention is given to Stalingrad as a turning point seems more of a matter in psychology than history. During 1942, the Allies built 57,000 tanks. The Germans built 5,500. Japan barely more than a thousand. The Allies also produced 95,000 aircraft. The Germans and Japanese combined for a mere 24,000. Here is one statistic that really brings home just how hopeless the German position was in a war of attrition. During the entire war, Germany produced about 350,000 military trucks. Canada. Yes, we are just talking Canada built over 800,000 military transport vehicles. The handwriting was on the wall. The only possible way Germany could avoid impending defeat after December 1941 was a desperate offensive that would both knock the Soviet Union out of the war and take the oil fields in the Caucasus before the Soviets could sabotage them or US and British bombers from Iran could destroy them. That's the reason why there was a battle of Stalingrad in the first place. In the end, Germany's forces were too weak, too inadequately supplied, and would become too overextended. Stalingrad did not turn the tide of the war. The Allies wanted Stalingrad because the tide had already turned.